The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Youth, Civic Relations, and Community Development has held a two-day stakeholder consultation with health training institutions and students.
 
The consultations seek to strengthen the quality and regulation of health training to ensure a competent health workforce, safeguard patient safety, and reduce health graduate unemployment.
 
 The Chairperson of the committee noted that in recent years, Namibia's health sector has seen a significant growth in the number of health training institutions.
 
Marlayn Mbakera stated that although the rise in graduates is a positive development, it has also sparked concerns around the growing number of unemployed graduates, declining training quality, the rapid expansion of training institutions, and a mismatch between training outputs and the needs of the labour market.
 
“The reason why we are here is to take note of the challenges, and as you can see in our concept note, we are going to make recommendations, and we want to make life easier without the parents losing much of their money, sending their children to school, graduating, and ending up with no work.”
 
Twelve health training institutions presented their profiles.
 
Some of them pointed out regulatory overlaps, coordination challenges, and accreditation delays caused by accrediting institutions such as the Health Professional Council of Namibia (HPCN), the Namibia Qualification Authority (NQA), and the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE).
 
A member of the Education Standing Committee, Willem Amutenya, explained.
 
“When the accreditation is not positive, what happens to our students, and where do they go?”
  
Director of the Compassion College Johannes Nampweya shared his sentiments.
 
“We submitted, but up to now people who are supposed to accredit us are sitting in their offices; they didn't come. If you were me, honourable, what would you do?”
 
 A representative of Symanek Specialized College, Jeremia Fillemon also shared his views.
 
“Before you are accredited, you have to have students enrolled, and yes, because without students, you will not be accredited.”
 
A member of the Health Professional Council of Namibia, Professor Cilash Wilders, highlighted the role of the regulators. 
"We are also looking into the process with regulations from the council side. They need to be registered with NCHE and NQA because that accreditation is also needed for the facilities. So, it's not only the HPCN that is involved; it's a triparty, so they must have those three accreditations and approval before they commence with training.”
 
The report and recommendations emanating from the consultations will be tabled in Parliament.